Posts in Colonization Of Mars

On Jan. 5, 2015, SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted this photo of the autonomous spaceport drone ship that will serve as a rocket landing platform in the Atlantic Ocean. SpaceX will try to land the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on the ship on Jan. 6, 2015. Credit: Elon Musk/SpaceX Koenigsmann also stressed that getting Dragon safely to the space station is Tuesday s main mission objective, and that the first-stage return test is merely a secondary…

Maggie Lieu, 23, is one of the Britons hoping to be accepted on to the Mars One project. Photograph: Karen Robinson for the Observer Karen Robinson/Observer project hasn t had an easy ride. Critics have questioned all aspects, from the technical feasibility to its funding model. But recent developments from the project seem to be bringing the goal of starting a human colony on Mars by 2025 a little closer. Last month, Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp…

Specifically, it appears that a two-foot-long steel strut - one of several hundred built into the Falcon 9, responsible for holding the rocket s helium tanks in place - snapped in half, failing under 2, pounds of stress, despite being designed to withstand 10, pounds. What happened next is uncertain. But with two pieces of hardware rattling around within a pressurized metal tube straining under more than three Gs of acceleration - plus a loose…

If all goes according to plan, the two companies will reduce or end NASA s dependence on Russia for its orbital taxi service By Mike Wall and SPACE.com | September 17, 2014 NASA has picked SpaceX s Dragon Version 2 manned spacecraft (left) and Boeing s CST-100 space capsule to fly American astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit from U.S. soil for the first time since the shuttle fleet s retirement in 2011. Credit: SpaceX/Boeing American astronauts…

During a pad abort test last week, engineers with NASA and SpaceX told us what they hope to learn from the demonstration of the company’s escape system. Below are a few more details about the sequence of events and what the test will look like if you’re watching here along Florida’s Space Coast or live on NASA TV on Wednesday, May 6. The biggest takeaway is that this test will be quick! And that’s the point – SpaceX wants to demonstrate its ability…

To be fair, there’s no doubt that Elon Musk is a genius. Tesla and SpaceX are two of the most exciting companies on the planet and they’re doing incredibly important and groundbreaking work in the fields of electric cars and space exploration, respectively. There’s no way either of those companies would have come as far as they have without Musk pushing his engineers to their limits — one anonymous SpaceX engineer, for instance, says Musk has a “reality…

By Elizabeth Howell SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is a huge fan of Mars exploration and Mars colonies, and in a new interview he says a launch system to send people to the Red Planet could be available in 10 to 12 years. Requirements: it has to be big, and it has to be launched frequently to send millions of people and tons of cargo spaceward. “We need to develop a much larger vehicle, which would be a sort of Mars colonial transport system, and this would…

This was a devastating blow to SpaceX and NASA, not just for all the hard work lost in seconds, but also for the loss of work to come. There were several supplies onboard the ship meant for studying human space travel – including a wet lab for researching which genes turn on and off in space – a good data point for determining longer missions in space. “This new technology could also empower future explorers requiring greater autonomy on the journey…

Elon Musk doesn’t just want to send a person to Mars — he wants to send 80, . According to Space.com, the billionaire founder and CEO of the private spaceflight company SpaceX spilled details about his hopes for a future Mars colony during a talk at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London on Nov. 16. Earlier this year, SpaceX became the first private U.S. company to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. Musk has never been shy about his…

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — As Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) ramps up for regular cargo runs to the international space station from Florida, a new launch site to put satellites into polar orbits from California is on track to debut next year. The company, which in October completed the first of 12 planned space station resupply flights under a $1.6 billion NASA contract, is refurbishing Space Launch Complex-4 (SLC-4) East at Vandenberg…